A jury convicted Deon Lomax Clopten of murder Friday in a retrial of a case that changed the way Utah courts handle eyewitness identification experts.

The jury also found Clopten guilty of possession of a dangerous weapon by a restricted person, a second-degree felony.

Clopten was sentenced after the verdict to five years to life for the murder of Tony Fuailemaa and one to 15 years for the possession of a dangerous weapon charge.

Clopten asked to be sentenced immediately but refused to remain in the courtroom as his victim's family spoke.

"Coward!" a woman shouted as he was removed from the room.

In his absence, Fuailemaa's family spoke of pain and closure.

"I was there the night my brother was taken from me," Silipa Fuailemaa said. "I found him. ... I gave him CPR. I held his hand."

He added, "We just want justice. We just want to put Tony to rest, and today we did it again."

Earlier this week in 3rd District Court, Shannon Pantoja testified she was certain Clopten was the hooded man who emerged from a darkened downtown alcove on the night of Dec. 1, 2002, and fatally shot her fiancé, Fuailemaa.

"She recognized him from [an] earlier meeting" that night at a Salt Lake City club, prosecutor Fred Burmester told the jury Friday.

But as had been the case for nearly nine years, defense attorneys spent the week casting doubt on the accuracy of eyewitnesses, questioning whether Pantoja and two other witnesses who identified Clopten as the shooter really saw what they thought they did.

"Honest people make honest mistakes," argued defense attorney Jeremy Delicino, "and honest mistakes were made in this case. ... Don't confuse honesty with accuracy or honesty with reliability."

An eyewitness identification expert for the defense, Brian Cutler, of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, testified Thursday that Pantoja's identification could have been affected by several factors, including her relatively brief exposure to the shooter; her focus on the gun; the fact that the shooter was wearing a hood; and the fact that the woman and the shooter are of different races.

But John Yuille, a forensic psychiatry expert from the University of British Columbia who testified for the prosecution, said the high-stress situation may have actually improved Pantoja's ability to recall her fiancé's killer.

The experts' testimony is the reason Clopten was again facing trial in the slaying. The 35-year-old was convicted of first-degree felony murder in 2006, but the Utah Supreme Court overturned the conviction with a far-reaching decision that found the trial court erred in not allowing an expert in eyewitness identification to testify. Instead, as had been standard practice, the judge used a jury instruction to inform jurors about potential pitfalls associated with the recollections of eyewitnesses.

The high court's ruling changed the way such cases are handled by saying experts in the science of eyewitness identification routinely should be allowed at trial.

Clopten's defense attorneys have said witnesses falsely identified Clopten as the gunman and that Clopten's cousin, Freddie White, is the real killer.

On Thursday morning, two of Clopten's sisters and a friend testified that, on separate occasions, White confessed to them that he killed Fuailemaa, 27, outside the now razed Club X-Scape, near 150 S. West Temple. None of the three, however, went to police before being contacted by Clopten's attorneys in 2005.

The jury began deliberating about noon Friday.

afalk@sltrib.com